favourite settings

I think for me, perhaps like many, it's a matter of old habits dying hard!

Arena shows & Festival headliners

Manual
RAW
Centre Point AF, AE locked to AF point
F/4
At least 1/200
ISO 1000-1600

Poorly lit shows

Manual
RAW
Centre Point AF, AE locked to AF point
F/2.8
1/160
ISO 1600-3200

Red carpet shoots

Manual
RAW
Centre Point AF, AE locked to AF point
f/5.6
1/125
ISO 200
Flash set to 1/8 for rapid recharging

Really lazy when it comes to settings & shoot what I know, I obviously adjust shutter speed depending on light but work from those points as a starting point...

Oh always AWB too

Well I use TAv mode most of the time now. I prefer to change aperture and shutter speed independently and have ISO follow to correct the exposure.

Great thread even if I say so myself.
So far no one has said any thing about using the custom settings on page 222. I am assuming that if you are working on a landscape you would at least start with this setting and if so have you adjusted anything. Lastly can you tell me the difference between Fine and Extra sharpness.

Simple. In Av mode I can adjust aperture with one dial and ISO with the other. That's optimal most of the time.

Other than that the best advice I can give is RAW mode always. Because I don't want to throw away a third of my image.

The beauty of an SLR is that you change change settings to suit the circumstance. So nothing stays in one place forever. But generally I use SELected focus point, centre-weighted metering, and standard RAW (not proprietary PEF).

Most of the other settings don't matter. Because of RAW. Naturally.

Good point rparmar. I'd overlooked the E-Dial Programming. The default setting is for the front dial to do nothing in Av mode, which does seem a bit pointless. I don't think you can get aperture access on one dial and ISO access on the other in P mode.

What's the feeling here about enabling Highlight Correction? I believe that the D-Range settings also affect the RAW output and a crude test I performed seemed to confirm that. I'm still undecided as to whether it's worth sacrificing a stop of ISO for Highlight Correction. I rarely get a blown out overexposure at the RAW level (underexposure is more my forte) as I find RAW grants about one stop margin (another data bit?) over JPEG. However, if I disable Highlight Correction I just know I'll blow out that photo of the year!

I don't remember the details but recall it's best to disable (or simply not enable) highlight correction or any other sort of exposure automation. As in all such things, one is trusting in the computer we call a camera to be smarter than we are as photographers. And I haven't yet found that to be the case.

I would rather work with the full uncompromised dynamic range, bracketing where necessary. A good deal can then be done in RAW development to get the desired result.